Anne Frank
It is rather curious how out of all the countless stories of loss, horror, and human frailty to come out of Nazi Germany it is the diary of a fifteen-year-old girl, left behind not because it was forgotten, but because its owner perished in a concentration camp, that has stood the test of time.
The collected musings of Anne Frank, a self-conscious, love-stricken teen, bound in book form, somehow became the voice of the Holocaust, and in her face, the world saw the promise of millions of lives cut short.
German citizens, the Frank family fled the country for the illusion of safety in Amsterdam. Once in Holland, Otto began a successful manufacturing business, and it is in an annex behind one of his company’s warehouses where the Frank family went in to hiding two years after the Nazi’s invaded the Netherlands. Anne was just 15-years old when she, her father, her mother Edith, sister Margot, and four other Jewish friends of the family closeted themselves away in the annex- a lone bookcase providing their only shield from the prying eyes of officers conducting search raids.
During the Frank family’s 761 days locked inside, or nearly two years in captivity, Otto’s workers hid him, his family and friends from marauding SS officers while periodically providing them with food and other needed supplies.
Also, during their time in hiding, Anne Frank fell in love with Peter van Pels, a fellow Jew whom she initially disliked. Over time, the two became close friends, with Peter confiding in Anne he would like to reinvent himself entirely when the Allies overthrew the Nazis and they were finally free of the annex.
On Friday, August 4,1944, the annex was raided.
Officers went first to the office and questioned the manager before the building was searched. It is widely believed they were tipped off to the annex hidden behind the bookcase.
Otto said he was in Peter’s room helping him with schoolwork when an officer suddenly appeared pointing a gun at them. The group was herded together into one room and stripped of their valuables. In the process, the pages of Anne’s diary fluttered to the floor, forgotten and trampled.
The raid on the annex lasted an agonizing two hours.
Later, some of Otto’s loyal workers came back to the annex, and finding the pages of Anne’s diary, collected them and hid them away. The girl’s written thoughts lay tucked away in a drawer for the remainder of the war, silently waiting for her father to claim them.
Which he did, publishing “The Diary of a Young Girl,” in 1947.
The book sent shockwaves around the world, and the public suddenly could not get enough of Anne Frank. With every reading of her diary one lingering question continued to haunt: Who? Who betrayed the eight people hidden inside the annex?
As it is a crime in the Netherlands to betray fellow Dutch to the Nazis, the release of Anne’s diary ignited public outcry for an investigation.
To date, two Dutch led investigations into the betrayer of the Franks, and their friends have been conducted, one in 1948, and the other in 1963.
Modern crime solving technology was combined with artificial intelligence in 2016 and applied to the Anne Frank case, leading investigators and historians to announce they may have unmasked Judas.
A cold case from the 1940s, there was no video or DNA evidence left behind to guide investigators in 2016.
What was available are records — records of citizenship, transportation, concentration camp rolls, officer reports, ect. — to scour for even the smallest tantalizing clue.
And, one such clue was found buried in reports.
The only member of the annex to survive, Otto Frank received an anonymous letter after his release declaring the betrayer of his family to have been a member of the Jewish Council, local lawyer, and fellow Jew named Arnold Van den Bergh.
Otto mentioned this letter during his 1963 interrogation.
The note claimed Van den Bergh, who died in 1950, turned over extensive lists to the Nazis containing the names and addresses of fellow Jews in hiding.
Armed with this information, and the knowledge that SS officers noted in their reports they were receiving assistance from a member of the Jewish Council, the investigative team poured over concentration camp roll rosters, quickly noticing neither Arnold’s name, nor the names of any of his immediate family members, ever appeared.
In fact, investigators found the Van den Bergh family to still be living freely out in the open in Amsterdam after the fall of the Jewish Council in 1943, when the rest of its members were arrested and themselves sent to camps. The council was established February 11, 1941, to advocate for the Jewish community during the Nazi occupation.
Barring any unknown evidence, it can never be truly proven who betrayed the eight people hidden away in the annex. Maybe there is no need to assign blame when so many would make the same choice when forced to decide between your own family’s safety and that of a nameless, faceless one hiding in an annex — what would you do?
Assigning blame does not change the outcome.
On September 4, 1944, the Frank family was together for the last time.
Terrified and separated by gender, the Frank family was loaded onto cattle cars — Otto to Auschwitz, his wife and daughters to Birkenau. He never saw his family again.
All told, three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population perished at the hands of the Nazi regime while a mostly silent world refused to pay attention.
Anne Frank was arrested three days after her last diary entry on Tuesday, August 1, 1944. Here are the words she left the world:
“I keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if, if only there were no other people in the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank.”